SAC CITY, IOWA – DECEMBER 21, 2010
1. Background information for the committee.
- Types of funding.
-- Restrictions to the various types of funding.
2 Why does it cost so much for engineering?
- It’s required by law.
- The city is not allowed to ask how much the y will cost until they have identified a couple that they would like to negotiate with.
-- The state doesn’t want municipalities to get tied up in cost.
- The council will not be subject to lowest bidder laws.
3. What is the engineer responsible for providing?
- It depends on what the council negotiates with them.
4. The council is required to have a pre-design and design engineer due to the cost (+$100K)
5. Background information for the committee continued
6. Rating system to identify the roads most in need of repair discussed.
7. Streets identified as most in need in the context of a one million dollar project:
- Elm Street to Morningside.
- Platt Street between 5th and 9th.
- Bowery Street between 5th and 6th.
- Hobbs street between 3rd and 6th.
- Leonard Street between 5th and 8th, (and up around the curve towards Audubon on 8th)
- Portions of Third Street. (gravel area)
- 6th Street between Audubon and Leonard.
- South 9th from Bowery to Audubon.
- Gishwiller from 16th to Meadowlark.
8. Repair jobs recognized as in need:
- Park Ave in front of the fairgrounds.
9. Committee members asked to drive around and take a look at the locations.
- These recommendations are not set in stone.
10. Alternatives discussed by Scheffler.
- Basically shorter versions of the recommendations, particularly on Platt and Bowery.
- Frohardt seems to disagree with the concept of skipping blocks.
11. “How to hire an engineer”
12. How much will one block of street cost?
- Minimum of $35,000 to $40,000.
- Top end of $135,000.
13. How long will the streets last?
14. How will this project be paid for?
- GO bond has fewer laws than special assessment.
15. More costly engineers will cost you less in the long run.
- Bids are more accurate, etc.
16. There are 4 different options.
- Write a check.
-- Sac doesn’t have enough money
-- Road use tax barely covers 50% of current maintenance work to streets, (roughly $200K of the roughly $400K)
- Do a General Obligation Bond.
-- The entire city would be “billed” equally (per $1,000.00 of property value)
--- A $3 million dollar bond would raise taxes $6 per $1,000 (up to roughly $23 per $1,000) and would take ten years to pay off.
- Do a special assessment.
-- Can bill homeowners up to 25% of the taxable value of their homes.
-- There is a method for poor people to get a waiver.
--- City Administrator is not aware of the exact method of how this is done.
-- The city will have to do a GO Bond for any amount that special assessment will not cover.
-- Places like the middle school are an issue because they are a non taxpaying entity and the property owners on the other side of the streets will have to bear the brunt of the cost.
-- The engineer will be the one
- A mix of special assessment and GO bond.
17. Questions and discussion from/with Curtis Bloes.
- Confirming point system for making determination of choosing engineer.
- How is the point system determined?
- More detail on stripped street process.
-- Doesn’t know.
-- At some point you will go through an engineering process and will learn more.
18. Pros and cons of the various payment options.
- GO bond allows you to know how much money you are getting and allows you to set up regular payments.
- Portions of special assessment may not make it back into your hands in a manner that will allow you to cashflow the project.
- Special assessment has more legal procedure.
-- There are different ways to determine assessment.
- Special assessment allows you to leave the GO for emergencies.
- Special assessment doesn’t allow you to spread the cost out.
- GO bond leads to arguments about who uses the streets, etc and can make people angry.
19. The day of cities using GO bonds to pay for projects is going away in the next 50 years.
20. Frohardt tiptoes around a lack of proper past street maintenance as a possible justification for doing GO bonds. (not the specific property owners fault that the streets weren’t taken care of.)
21. Committee starts to come to the conclusion that they would like to recommend a mix of special assessment and GO bond to the council.
22. Nobody said they were against a GO bond to fix the streets up.
23. Committee directs the administrator to recommend a mix of Special assessment and GO bond in his requests for proposal to engineers. city council.
25. Nothing has ever been set aside for maintenance department to fix streets.
26. Knee high weeds growing in the street by the golf course.
27. The budget for public works is growing.
- Not specifically for streets, however.
28. Who owns the curbs downtown?
- The city owns the curbs everywhere in town.
30. More questions with Curtis Bloes
- Will they repair utilities when the streets are torn up?
-- Yes
-- Will be paid 100% by the utilities.
- How could a property owner qualify for a hardship waiver?
-- It’s a complicated answer and is better left to the engineers to puzzle out.
- Is the low and middle income number still at 50% in Sac City?
- Yes.
-31. No news back yet from the census at the city level.
- 32. How come road use tax money is not being used to fix the streets.
- The operating budget for street projects is about double the amount of money that comes in through the road use tax.
33. Brief criticism of IJOBS program.
Copyright (c)2007-2010 Curtis Bloes All Rights Reserved
Adam's comment on the utilities paying for all replacement work(sewers, gas, etc.) without a dime of taxpayers money is a little misleading. These costs are built into the rates and subsequent rate increases.
ReplyDelete[Source? ED]
So the current 17 dollars per 1000 tax rate that was quoted. Does that rate include the sewer plant up grade? Or are we looking at a potential 6 dollar increase for streets and the increase (rate cost escapes my memory) for the sewer in the next few years.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting. A lot of information.
Maybe we should just let Frohardt construct the new streets. He once poured some concrete on his farm on one of the five days he worked last year.
ReplyDelete